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Chuck Berry

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"His mother told him someday you will be a man, And you would be the leader of a big old band. Many people coming from miles around To hear you play your music when the sun go down."

— "Johhny B. Goode"

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Charles Edward Anderson "Chuck" Berry (October 18, 1926  March 18, 2017) was an American Rock & Roll guitarist, singer and songwriter best known for his string of pioneering hit singles during The '50s. Indisputably one of the most important and influential performers of all time, his best known songs include "Johnny B. Goode", "Roll Over Beethoven", "Maybellene" and many more. It's generally considered that if it weren't for the racism at the time of his fame, Berry would have been crowned "King Of Rock And Roll" instead of Elvis Presley by a vast majority.

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Like his contemporaries Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis, Berry remained fairly active over the past sixty years. On his 90th birthday in 2016, he announced that he was working on new songs for the first time since 1979, after decades of insisting he was too old to put out any more work. He thankfully managed to finish recording one final album before his death in March of the following year.

1972 - The London Chuck Berry Sessionsnote The first half of the album was recorded in the studio

1973 - Bio

1975 - Chuck Berry

1979 - Rock It

1987 - Hail! Hail! Rock 'N' Roll

2017 - Chuck

Live Discography:

1963 - Chuck Berry On Stagenote Studio recordings, both old and previously unreleased, with added echo and overdubbed audience

1967 - Live At The Fillmore Auditorium

1972 - The London Chuck Berry Sessionsnote The second half of the album was recorded live

1978 - Chuck Berry Live In Concert

1981 - Alive And Rockin'

1981 - Chuck Berry Live

1982 - Toronto Rock 'N' Roll Revival 1969 Vol. II

1982 - Toronto Rock 'N' Roll Revival 1969 Vol. III

2000 - Live!

2000 - Live On Stagenote Recorded in 1983

2002 - Chuck Berry - In Concert

"Let me hear some of that trope and roll music, any old time you choose it":

Abridged for Children: His version of "Merry Christmas Baby" changes the present in the first verse from a diamond ring to a hi-fi, and changes the last line from "I haven't had a drink this morning, but I'm all lit up like a Christmas tree" to "I will always love you baby. Now I'm happy as I can be", presumably to make it slightly more suitable for his teen fanbase.

Audience Participation Song: One of most proliferated recordings of "My Ding-a-Ling" involves him getting the audience to sing the chorus back to him.

B-Side: A number of his best-known songs were actually the B-side of their respective singles, most notably "Memphis, Tennessee" (the A-side was "Back in the USA").

Bait-and-Switch: "Memphis, Tennessee" appears to be a standard teenage love story about a guy desperately trying to get in touch with his girlfriend Marie, whose mother disapproves of them seeing each other. The last verse reveals that Marie is not his girlfriend but his daughter.

But Not Too Black: The record company originally tried to hide the fact that he wasn't white. Of course, the advent of television made that pretty hard. They did make him change Johnny B Goode to a "country boy" rather than a "coloured boy", though.

Car Song: Starting with "Maybellene", these were a common part of his work. He even did a song about buying a car ("No Money Down").

Christmas Songs: Both sides of his 1958 Christmas single are still heard frequently today: "Run Rudolph Run" (not written by him, but very much in his Signature Style), and his version of the Johnny Moore/Charles Brown classic "Merry Christmas Baby".

Double Entendre: "My Ding-a-Ling." The whole song is basically one big double entendre, with nothing terribly subtle about it. With the refrain "I want to play with my ding-a-ling!" it borders on being a single entendre.

Epic Rocking: The instrumental "Concerto In B. Goode", at 18:40, is easily 5-6 times longer than most of his other songs.

"No Particular Place To Go" has the teenage characters go to Make-Out Point to... "take a stroll." Uh-huh. Of course, nothing happens.

Can you imagine the way I felt? I couldn't unfasten her safety belt!

"Brown-Eyed Handsome Man" is about interracial relationships, which needed a fair amount of radar-past-getting in 1956.

Gratuitous French: "You Never Can Tell" includes "monsieur and madam have rung the chapel bell/C'est la vie said the old folks, goes to show you never can tell." Possibly justified, since the groom in the song is named Pierre.

The Scrooge: He would rather go to jail (for the second time, even!) than pay a fine when he was sentenced for tax fraud in the seventies. When he went on tour, he demanded that the local organisers provide him with a backing band, because he didn't want to pay travelling expenses for his own band.

Something Blues: While he wasn't a blues singer, he recorded for one of the definitive blues labels (Chess) and it's reflected in titles like "Drifting Blues," "St. Louis Blues" and "Worried Life Blues"

Something Completely Different: The Latin-tinged ballad "Drifting Heart" and the calypso-style "Havana Moon" were notable changes-of-pace from his early rock sound.

Take That!: "Roll Over Beethoven" is a double case - both at the composer, and at his parents who didn't let him use their piano since it was only for his sister's classical training.

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